


The Only Ones Who Can

by flipflop_diva



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Awesome Sam Wilson, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Comfort/Angst, Developing Relationship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Natasha Feels, Natasha Needs a Hug, Natasha-centric, Red Room references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-14 21:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4581171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is for children, and Natasha isn't a child. But she never expected things to be this complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Ones Who Can

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justhuman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justhuman/gifts).



> To justhuman, I hope you enjoy this! These three are my complete and total OT3, so I thank you a thousand times over for letting me write them for you. I stalked you a bit on AO3, so I hope I've including some things in here that you like!

“Hey stranger. What’s a boy like you doing in a place like this?” Natasha leaned across the bar, lowering her voice just the way she’d been taught that men liked it and fluttering her lashes at the guy across from her.

Bruce, though, did not react at all the way she had hoped.

“Natasha, what are you doing?” he asked, and he almost sounded disappointed, like she was doing something he didn’t approve of.

She frowned, instantly taken aback. “Talking to a nice guy?”

“You’re flirting with me.”

Well, yes, she was. She nodded. “You don’t like it?”

Now Bruce smiled. “I didn’t say that,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure there are two other men here you would much rather be flirting with than me.” He made a gesture with his head, but she didn’t have to look that way to know who he was referring to. She knew all too well Steve and Sam had been standing together for the past eighty-seven minutes, absorbed only in each other, neither of them casting a single glance her way.

She sighed and straightened up, reaching down for a clean glass and then searching for the whiskey. “Steve and Sam don’t need me,” she said, uncapping the bottle. “They have each other.”

“I don’t think that’s an issue for either of them.”

“What makes you think it’s not an issue for me?”

“Is it?”

Natasha poured the whiskey into the glass, careful to fill it precisely to the top. She didn’t answer Bruce. Of course it wasn’t an issue, and Bruce knew that. The real issue had nothing to do with what she did or didn’t want.

She looked up to see Bruce still smiling at her, his eyes twinkling.

“What?” she said.

“For the smartest, most observant person I’ve ever met,” Bruce said, “you’re a little slow on the relationship cues.”

Natasha didn’t react. She drained the whiskey down her throat without missing a beat. His words stung, though, hitting her just where it hurt. But of course Bruce couldn’t have known that. 

She put her drink down and looked up at him, matching his smile. “No,” she said sweetly. “I just know where I belong. And I promise you, it’s not with them.”

•••

_Love is for children._

She had said that once, to Loki. It felt like a lifetime ago, but she had meant it then. Love — the kind people talked about, with that idealistic, hopeful sort of tone — only existed to those who were young enough, or foolish enough, to believe in it. And she was neither young nor foolish. She never had been. She’d found out far too early that caring about anything too deeply only led to pain.

It was harder now, first with SHIELD and now with the Avengers, with people who openly told her she mattered to them, to close herself off. Clint was the first one she’d let in, then Coulson, then Fury and Laura and the children. Each person she opened her heart up to broke down more of her defenses, and it terrified her. Being vulnerable, being compromised.

She’d worked so hard to not need anyone, to always stand alone …

It’s why she had tried so hard with Steve, tried to keep her distance, to not let him see the real her. She thought he’d run if he ever got a good look at who she really was. She’d never expected him to want to be her friend. She really never expected him to save her, to protect her, to want her to be around.

She never expected to want to be around him either.

But after SHIELD fell, after all her covers were blown … She had never told them, but Steve and Sam, they made her feel _safe_ , safe in a way she had never felt before. They teased her and they talked about how they didn’t understand her when they thought she wasn’t listening but they always included her and they always took care of her, even when she was crawling into bed between them when she knew they wanted to have sex, just to see what they would do, just to see how far she could push them.

Sometimes in the dark of night, when they were all curled together, she would imagine Steve’s hand drifting across her skin, would almost feel Sam’s lips on hers, and for a moment she would let herself dream … but then the sun would rise and she would slip so far away they couldn’t reach her.

She knew who she was, what she was capable of. Steve and Sam might care about her, but she cared too much about them to be willing to destroy them. They were too good for her. That much she knew.

•••

Pain. So much pain.

Everything hurt. Her head. Her body. Even her thoughts. She was trapped, fingers of past ghosts sliding over her body, touching her, holding her down, forcing her to do things she never wanted to do, forcing her to relive things she never wanted to relive.

She wanted to scream or kick or fight, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

Pain. So much pain.

For a second, the world righted, and she thought she felt Steve, felt his hands holding her against him, felt the heat of his body warm against her cheek. She closed her eyes, breathed him in. 

Steve would protect her. Steve would take care of her.

When she woke again, it wasn’t Steve who was with her, though, it was Clint, his worried eyes looking her over. She turned her head away from him, swallowed down the unfamiliar lump in her throat.

Clint stroked her hair, told her she was safe, that it had been the little witch who had done it, that it wasn’t real. He put his arms around her and helped her stand, helped her walk from the plane, helped her remember who she needed to pretend to be so she didn’t let the kids see her hurting. So she didn’t let anyone see her hurting.

She passed Steve in the hall that night. He didn’t even try to meet her eyes, just walked by her like she didn’t exist. She slid into one of the bedrooms, a different kind of pain making her chest physically ache. Things had changed since they moved into Avengers Tower. She knew that was her fault. She had left them, Steve and Sam, without a word the morning after the night she realized she never wanted to leave them at all. She hadn’t said goodbye, hadn’t even waited till they were awake. She didn’t call or visit or anything. They saw her for the first time two months later when they walked into the kitchen area at the Tower and found her chatting with Tony.

She knew they would be hurt — she couldn’t tell them she had left to protect them, that she had left because she wasn’t good for them. She knew they might want to yell or that things might be uncomfortable. 

She hadn’t expected Steve to start calling her Romanoff again, though. She hadn’t expected them to avoid her altogether. And she definitely hadn’t expected him to not _be_ there when she needed him.

She stood up from the bed and slid to the door. Steve was still in the hall, but his phone was pressed to his ear. She watched his mouth move, saw his features relax, saw him smile. 

She knew who was on the other end of the phone, and the ache in her chest grew tenfold.

She watched Steve a little longer, this man who was so far out of her reach, talking to another man equally as far out of her reach, then she adjusted her shoulders, schooled her expression and went to find Bruce.

•••

The celebration party for Ultron’s defeat was a somber affair. There were no guests, no music, no laughter. Just a group of tired people sitting around miserably.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Tony said.

“I’m going back to Asgard,” Thor said.

“I’m going wherever he’s going.” Sam’s smile was less beaming than normal, but the way he looked at Steve made Natasha’s heart hurt in a way she didn’t like.

She took a swig of her beer and avoided looking at anyone. “I don’t know that I can do this anymore either,” she said.

It was Tony who scoffed. “And where else are _you_ going to go?”

The words were meant to be joking, the laughter from the others meant to be teasing, but she could only blink at them all, a weight suddenly pressing down on her. She had tried to find herself after SHIELD fell and only found herself caring too much about people she shouldn’t be caring about. Where _could_ she go now?

She put her beer down, no longer thirsty, and slid to her feet.

“Natasha! Wait!” It was Tony calling after her, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t leave — she really did have no where else to go — but she couldn’t stay here.

•••

She wasn’t asleep when they came, but she hadn’t expected company. Especially not from them. She was lying on her bed, the room pitch blank, looking up at a ceiling she could barely see.

She heard the click of the door, the soft thread of footsteps, but she didn’t move, didn’t reach for the gun tucked safely under her pillow.

She knew it was them, could tell from their smell and their footsteps and the way they breathed. She thought about pretending to be asleep, but she knew they would never buy that, so she lay there and waited, until they slipped into her room, laid down on either side of her, heads propped on elbows as they looked down at her.

“You’re not just supposed to drop in on a girl in the middle of the night,” she said, when it was clear neither of them was going to talk first. She kept her voice light, years of not putting emotion into anything paying off in spades.

“Well, we’ve lost count of how many times you’ve dropped in on us in the middle of the night,” Sam replied. “We thought it was time to return the favor.”

“So what do I owe this pleasure?”

Neither one said anything at first. Then Steve shifted, slipped his hand over her, his arm warm and heavy over her stomach. She wanted to push him away, to tell him to run, but instead she waited.

“We don’t want you to leave, Nat,” Steve said softly.

So that was it. They wanted a teammate.

Steve wasn’t done yet, though. “Whatever we did, Natasha, to push you away, you have to know it wasn’t intentional, and we’re sorry.”

She frowned, even though Steve could probably just barely see her face in the dark. “What you did?”

She blinked at him, uncomprehendingly. Steve nodded. “We … misread the signals is all. We thought you wanted something you didn’t want. We’re very sorry.”

She stared at him, her mind whirling. She didn’t understand. What did he mean? “Misread?” she managed.

“We love you.” It was Sam speaking now. “Not _that_ way, but …”

“Yes, that way,” Steve interrupted. 

“Not in a we need you to reciprocate way,” Sam said quickly. “That’s what I was trying to say. Just … we love you, and we wanted …. But we pushed and …

“We’re sorry,” Steve said.

“We are,” Sam added.

Natasha still didn’t understand. The things they were saying, the way they were looking at her … She had worked so hard to push them away, to keep them at a distance, and it had worked, too well, but it had worked, but now …

“Love?” she finally managed. “Love me?”

They were looking at her strangely, both of them, like she had two heads, like she wasn’t making sense. Maybe she wasn’t. The world felt like it had tilted, like everything she had known, everything she had ever wanted, had been turned upside down.

“Yes,” Steve said. “Love you. Deeply. And we’re sorry.”

They were sorry … sorry for loving her … sorry ….

She shook her head. “You can’t!” she burst out.

It was Steve’s turn to blink in confusion. “We can’t what?”

“Love me,” she said, like that was obvious. “You can’t love me.”

“I don’t think you get to decide that,” Sam said, and he chuckled softly. “But we will leave you alone, if that’s what you want.”

And there it was, her opportunity. Her chance. He was offering her what she had thought she had wanted from the beginning — Steve to stay away from her, to not get close to her, to not have a chance to be tainted by her, to keep Sam with him and also away from her.

But they loved her. They _loved_ her. 

They kept her safe. They protected her. They teased her. They smiled at her. They talked to her. They treated her like she was equal to them. They trusted her. They respected her.

They _loved_ her.

And she loved them.

She did. She had been trying to hide from it, trying to outrun it.

Love is for children, and she wasn’t a child, but …

She couldn’t help it. A quiet sob broke from her throat, her hands reaching out desperately for them both.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered.

She loved them. She did. And someday she would tell them, but now, for now … Steve pulled her into his arms, wrapped himself around her. She felt Sam press up against her from behind, his lips on her neck, on her shoulders.

She lifted her head, pressed her lips to Steve’s, reached behind her to take Sam’s hand.

They loved her. They really loved her.

And it was okay.


End file.
